Author: Ritu Sarin
Publication: The Indian Express
Dated: August 16, 2007
Introduction: Appeal against rejection of extradition was ready when Govt withdrew; CBI chief claims I didn't know
After pressing for his extradition from Argentina for six months, the UPA Government last week withdrew the appeal which was prepared for an upcoming hearing in the Buenos Aires Supreme Court and, thus, allowed Bofors-accused Ottavio Quattrocchi to fly back - a free man to Milan.
This is similar to what happened in 2005 when the Government gave a clean chit to British authorities and allowed them to defreeze his Rs 21-crore accounts.
The latest move was confirmed to The Indian Express by diplomatic sources in Buenos Aires today who said, "The fact is that the Indian Government decided not to go ahead with the appeal and this led to Quattrocchi getting his travel documents back."
Confirming this, Quattrocchi's lawyer, Alejandro Freeland, told The Indian Express that last week, Indian Ambassador Pramathesh Rath handed over a "formal communication" to the Argentinian Foreign office asking to withdraw the Supreme Court appeal.
"I have not seen the communication," said Freeland, "but once the Argentinian prosecutors were informed about the development, my client was called to the court in El Dorado and handed back his passport. The fact is that the Supreme Court appeal was withdrawn on authority of the Indian Government and the extradition case was over last week itself...After that my client spent the next few days saying goodbye to all his friends and lawyers and waited for the flight to take him home."
Speaking to The Indian Express from Milan, Quattrocchi claimed he wasn't aware of the circumstances in which his passport was returned. "I along with my friends and lawyers was waiting for the Supreme Court hearing when I was asked to appear before the judge in El Dorado to get my passport back."
Quattrocchi had been detained at the Iguazu airport in Argentina's Misiones province on February 6 on the basis of an Interpol Red Corner Notice and the CBI presented 250 pages of "evidence" in court. On June 9, a court in El Dorado rejected the CBI's request for extradition.
In fact, last week, top CBI officials had claimed that an "automatic appeal" would be filed in the Supreme Court.
When questioned, CBI Director Vijay Shankar claimed he was "unaware" of the appeal being filed or withdrawn and was only informed this morning that Quattrocchi had got his passport back.
"Since the extradition request was turned
down in June on technical grounds, the CBI had said there were sufficient
grounds for appeal. I do not know what happened after that," Shankar
said, adding that he would now like to examine the Quattrocchi case "in
totality" and that as far as the agency was concerned, he is an absconder
wanted for trial in an Indian court.
While cheating is the only charge Quattrocchi faces, the agency has sent officials
across the world to establish the trail of funds linked to his company's account,
AE Services, into which $7.34 million was diverted in 1986 as part of the
alleged Bofors kickbacks.